Links

‘On Saturdays in Ordinary Time when there is no obligatory memorial, an optional memorial of the Blessed Virgin Mary is allowed.

‘Saturdays stand out among those days dedicated to the Virgin Mary. These are designated as memorials of the Blessed Virgin Mary. This memorial derives from Carolingian times (9th century), but the reasons for having chosen Saturday for its observance are unknown. While many explanations of this choice have been advanced, none is completely satisfactory from the point of view of the history of popular piety.

‘Whatever its historical origins may be, today the memorial rightly emphasizes certain values to which contemporary spirituality is more sensitive. It is a remembrance of the maternal example and discipleship of the Blessed Virgin Mary who, strengthened by faith and hope, on that “great Saturday” on which Our Lord lay in the tomb, was the only one of the disciples to hold vigil in expectation of the Lord’s resurrection. It is a prelude and introduction to the celebration of Sunday, the weekly memorial of the Resurrection of Christ. It is a sign that the Virgin Mary is continuously present and operative in the life of the Church.’

Directory on Popular Piety and the Liturgy (2001), §188

Other saints: Blessed Peter To Rot

Australia

He was born in 1912 at Rakunai, a village on the Melanesian island of New Britain, today part of Papua New Guinea. His parents belonged to the region’s first generation of Catholics. He was a pious boy and the parish priest thought that he should study for the priesthood, but his father felt that the tradition of Catholicism in the region was too short and none of the people were yet ready for the priesthood, so Peter became a catechist. He married in 1936 and had three children.

When the Japanese occupied the island during the war, all the missionaries and mission staff were imprisoned in a concentration camp and Peter was the only spiritual guide that Catholics had. He organized prayer services, gave religious instruction, baptized children, preserved the consecrated Hosts and administered them to the sick and dying, and gave help to the poor. The Japanese had destroyed the church when they arrived, so Peter built a new one out of the branches of trees.

After a quiet start, repression grew violent. The Japanese banned all Christian worship, public and private, and decided to reintroduce polygamy among the people. Peter was arrested in April or May 1945 and savagely “questioned” by officials. He was sentenced to two months in prison. A Japanese doctor came and injected him with poison, stuffed his ears and nose with cotton wool, and held him down and suffocated him until he died.

An immense crowd attended Peter’s burial, at which no religious rite was permitted. He has been increasingly revered as a martyr ever since that day.

See also Pope John Paul II’s sermon at Peter To Rot’s beatification, on Vatican web site.

Other saints: Saint Maelruain (- c.791)

Ireland

In 769 he founded the monastery at Tallaght, in County Dublin, Ireland. Together with St Aengus he wrote a detailed Rule for the community, which is an important document in the history of early monasticism.

Other saints: Our Lady of Budslau

Belarus

The multi-ethnic Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth was destroyed by the Prussian, Austrian and Russian Empires in 1793. Budslau (Belarusian: Будслаў, Polish: Budsław) is in the Mińsk district, which was taken over by the Russian Empire. Between the wars it formed part of the restored Poland; after the Second World War it was ethnically cleansed and became part of the Soviet Union until the Soviet Union itself collapsed in 1989. It is now part of the newly independent country of Belarus.

The miracle-working icon of Our Lady of Budslau has been a focus of pilgrimage since the 16th century. A monastery grew up to serve the pilgrims, and was later destroyed in the wars and revolutions that swept the area; but the icon survived wars, revolutions, and even the attempts by the Soviet secret police to destroy it.

Pilgrims have come from all the successor states of the Commonwealth: Belarus, Poland, Lithuania and Ukraine: secretly in the late 20th-century times of oppression and persecution, but openly since 1992.

This feast was traditionally celebrated on 2 July but in 2012 it was moved to the first Saturday of the month, because “Many believers, including students and priests, expressed their wish to celebrate the feast of Lord’s Mother of Budslau on Saturday because they want to do it to the full. Previously that was not possible because the feast often occurred to be on a workday.”

Cyril was born in 315 of Christian parents and succeeded Maximus as bishop of Jerusalem in 348. He was active in the Arian controversy and was exiled more than once as a result. His pastoral zeal is especially shown in his Catecheses, in which he expounded orthodox doctrine, holy Scripture and the traditions of the faith. They are still read today, and several of the Second Readings of the Office of Readings are taken from them. He died in 386. He is held in high esteem by both the Catholics and the Orthodox, and he was declared a Doctor of the Church by the Pope in 1883.

Liturgical colour: green

The theological virtue of hope is symbolized by the colour green, just as the burning fire of love is symbolized by red. Green is the colour of growing things, and hope, like them, is always new and always fresh. Liturgically, green is the colour of Ordinary Time, the season in which we are being neither especially penitent (in purple) nor overwhelmingly joyful (in white).

May all the peoples of the earth come to know that the Lord is God indeed, and that there is no other. May your hearts be wholly with the Lord our God, following his laws and keeping his commandments as at this present day.

The heart is more devious than any other thing, perverse too: who can pierce its secrets? I, the Lord, search to the heart, I probe the loins, to give each man what his conduct and his actions deserve.